Enhanced AviSys world bandcode files

A couple of people have contacted me about the fact that AviSys does not have bandcodes for species named after Rüppell, so I have decided to provide an enhanced set of bandcodes that addresses this problem.

A little background on where bandcode files come from may be informative. The N.A. mode bandcode files are hand-crafted, to include special-case codes like PRAW for Prairie Warbler and PROW for Prothonotary Warbler. Jerry distributed updated N.A. bandcode files with his updates, and now I include them with mine. World bandcode files, on the other hand, are not handcrafted and have never been distributed with updates. Instead, they are generated automatically when you click on “Create World Bandcode Files” in the Utilities menu. This generation simply runs every bird name through the algorithm described in the Band Codes help file. This algorithm does not deal with any special cases—you may have noticed that PRAW and PROW do not work in World mode; you have to use PRWA for each.

This generation has some shortcomings; Jerry alluded to one of them in the Band Codes help file, where he mentions that there is no band code for D'Arnaud's Barbet or D'Orbigny's Chat-Tyrant. I don't know why he thought this was hard, but he did. A newly revealed shortcoming is that the algorithm correctly generates band codes like rügr for Rüppell's Griffon, but AviSys does not support such codes.

I am now addressing these problems by supplying a partially hand-crafted replacement set of world bandcode files, WLDCODE.AVI and WORLDSEL.AVI. You can download these two files and place them in your data folder, replacing the generated files that you already have. You must understand that these files are vulnerable to destruction; if you for any reason ever click on “Create World Bandcode Files”, you will overwrite these replacement files.

Remember that these go in your DATA folder, not the main folder. You should find existing copies of the files already in your data folder.

These files add the following bandcodes in World mode:

By the way, the bandcode files are not black magic. In your main AviSys folder you should find a file named Bandcode.txt which (partially) documents how you can customize the files to your liking.